1. My memory is acting strange. I just read through this thread, wondering if I had taken the challenge. I had. I don't remember writing it. This is happening more and more. I feel as though my brain is filling up, not unlike a nearly-full hard drive. Yet for years I will find things that I've written and have absolutely zero memory of having written them.

2. I would love to see a photo of Alice, and to meet her as well. Her real name probably isn't Alice, but my mother's was.

3. I, too, feel like a completely different person than I was in the first half of my adulthood. I am so disconnected from my past, as someone previously mentioned. When I think of my past, I'm actually kind of embarrassed at who I used to be. It seems like I'm thinking of someone else. Perhaps this is normal as one approaches 50.

4. My goal was to live a life without regrets. I now regret a great deal. I am old enough and wise enough now to realize this isn't a failure, but inevitable, and to formulate such a goal in the first place was youthful folly.

5. I don't drink any more, because almost everything I regret I did while I was drunk.

6. I was bumped up a grade, skipped 3rd. This was due to having some kind of high IQ or something. I would not wish to do it again, and if I could go back in time, I would opt out (if my parents would let me). The result is that I was physically smaller than my classmates, and the girls were even more ahead of me than they would have been otherwise. This was intimidating and also resulted in my getting picked on a great deal. My self esteem was pretty much destroyed by the time I got to 8th grade, when I suddenly got very tall.

7. I hate, almost more than anything in life, calling strangers on the telephone. This has inhibited my career to a level I don't really care to think about. I was extremely and painfully shy for most of my adult life, until I discovered celexa, an antidepressant. I wish to god I'd had it when I was younger. My life might be greatly different now. Even with celexa I would rather do almost anything than cold call anyone.

8. I can draw extremely photographic-like pencil drawings. To me, it's nothing more than copying, a human xerox machine. Others think me an astoundingly gifted artist. I wish I was that. They are beautiful, but to me that's just the ridiculously painstaking craftsmanship I put into them. I haven't done one since my early 20's.

9. I'm good at a great many things, however I have failed to make money in my life, to the point that when I turn 50 in a few days, I will be more destitute than I've ever been in my life. I quite possibly face eviction, and this with a wife who had to quit her part-time job due to health problems and two kids.

10. I used to crash my buddy's computer whenever I would walk into his home office. Just by standing there.

11. I haven't worked since December 15th of last year. I'm starting to feel this must mean something. God is trying to tell me something. I don't know what, but I wish I did.

12. It's 2:42 in the morning and I am wide awake. I can hear both my kids, in their bedrooms, talking in their sleep. Their mom also talks in her sleep. Every night.

13. I had what I can only describe as "religious ecstasies" when I was in, oh, the 7th grade. In Germany, where I was living. These affected me profoundly, and even at my most agonstic, in college, I was unable to ever accept that there was no god, or spirit world, or whatever you want to call it. The only one I had as an adult was after almost losing my life in a hiking accident in the mountains of Colorado, where, due to pure stupidity and inexperience on my part, I started to slide down a mountainside and was only saved by jettisoning my heavy camera bag and watching it cartwheel down the mountainside into the rushing waters of the river several hundred feet below, where I would have gone had I not gotten rid of the extra weight. I stood in the moonlight looking over the valley and felt that same religious ecstasy I'd felt when I was a kid.

14. Ghosts seem to follow me. Either that or I am attracted to them. I've lived in several haunted houses now. The one I'm in now seems clean, except my son saw a man in the house soon after we moved in. He decided he was an "angel". It's not really fun to live in a haunted house. Ghosts can get into your own head, because they live in that realm between the physical and the soul, like they're stuck there, and they can actually make you get kind of crazy. In the house that was the most severely haunted, I once didn't sleep for what was probably two weeks. Maybe more. I went a bit mad. I wasn't the only one who experienced the ghost(s) there, in fact I could write a novel on that particular house and all the things that happened there. In fact, I made a short film about it, which I later turned into a feature film that I both wrote and directed. I was 27 when I did this, and haven't directed a movie since. I almost feel like the ghost helped get the thing made.

15. I swear to god I picked up my son before he was born, at a big house on the coast, in Malibu. His spirit was in the trees. I kept hearing a voice calling my name. Only time in my life that has happened. My wife was soon pregnant and I feel like that's who was calling my name. It was a very strong feeling.

16. When my wife was pregnant, one night I swear to god my son's spirit came out and was moving around the room. I was playing checkers with my stepdaughter and the checkers started moving on their own. Like someone was trying to play with us. I was dumbfounded. I tried to replicate the movement and could not. Something unseen was moving them.

17. Soon after he learned to speak, he began telling us, without suggestion, that he had a past life. He gave us a name and an occupation and listed a few of the habits of the person. Like drinking beer for lunch. Now he just laughs it off, almost like he's forgotten. I googled the name but could only find people in Switzerland with that name, it's Swiss German. My grandfather on my mother's side was Swiss German and his grandfather an immigrant from there.

18. I've been clairvoyant several times in my life. I cannot control it but wish I could. It comes from outside of me, that's how I tell it from a fear or a worry or a wish. Those things come from inside of me.

19. I've never had a real job, except for temp work.

20. The woman with whom I had the most profound and mystical supernatural connection with? Couldn't work out in real life. Real life isn't about that, it's about other things. I had a difficult time accepting that. It was very disappointing to realize that.

I have now listed 30, in this thread, and could easily keep going. Weird.

1) I need new shoes. Or glue to stick the soles back on. I'm flexible.

2) Vi is better than Emacs. Fact.

3) My first memories are being told off for sitting incorrectly, being told off for painting on my hands, being told off for making a toy gun out of lego, watching Andy Peters on CBBC and being told off forgetting a message. I never did take to school.

4) On leaving infant school it was discovered that of the cards containing maths work to do I had managed to complete zero over the course of the three or four years. Never do something now when you can not do it at all.

5) I have fallen off three bicycles. A pushbike when something I was carrying hanging from the handlebars got jammed in the wheel, a motorbike when I drove onto a big sheet of ice, and a BMX when I was a kid and was sprinting down a hill when I realised the brake cables were severed.

6) I don't seem to be able to think of any other facts.

Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia

After completing my post above at 3am, I tried to sleep but could not, but it was still dark outside when I finally did sleep, lightly.

And I had a vivid dream that we were all gathering at a place of Jeff's, out in the country. I remember thinking it didn't look much like Canada, it was too arrid.

I then met all of you, and as one would expect all of you looked very different than what I had previously pictured. Barracuda looked surprisingly nebbish, and Jewish, rather like a dentist (I can't explain).

1. I was born into an unusual family. My grandfather, a WW1 Thompson machine-gunner in the trenches of France used to be visited by the ghosts of comrades lost, so he became a Spiritualist Minister and Medium, founding a church in the city and a summer camp for psychics in the wilderness, where I spent my childhood vacations. To us, psychic phenomena was normal.

2. As an infant in an outdoor crib my older brother, a toddler, filled my crying mouth and nose with sand using his pail and shovel. I turned dark blue before being revived. To this day I can’t stand anything gritty in my mouth.

3. My Irish grandmother was telepathic, as was her son, my father. One day as a kid my brother and I became lost deep in the woods where we had ventured without telling anyone. Dad just appeared within minutes to guide us out. On another fishing trip he pulled the boat over to the bank in the middle of nowhere, helped us climb a rocky escarpment and came out above an isolated dirt road where we found our mother and the family car with a flat.

4. In school I skipped kindergarten, grade 3 and grade 8, so I was immature amongst my classmates but tried to make up for it by being very assertive.

5. My playmates were kids from a local Catholic orphanage that later was found to be a supplier of victims for McGill (Allen Institute) MK Ultra experiments under Dr. E. Cameron. My siblings and I still have nightmares about tests.

6. I saw a dull pewter disk hover in the sky with my brother beside me as a witness and sanity check when we were youngsters in Northern Ontario, Canada. It was part of a flap of sightings then investigated by Wilbert Smith, a research scientist hired by the national government for Project Magnet.

7. At age 21 I put an ad in the paper saying student of psychic phenomena seeks haunted houses to investigate and, after several leads and a flurry of publicity on tv and radio interviews for more leads, spent almost every overnight for many months alone in allegedly haunted homes with my pre-Ghost Busters kit of bell, book and candle – plus a flashlight and camera.

8. My first job with an international airline found me flying around the globe learning that, despite cultural and climate varieties, people are all the same.

9. My second career in the film industry taught me that telling your stories can be perilous but deeply satisfying if you have a Guardian Shaman or two aloft.

10. When all else fails, family is the foundation and firmament for love forever

1. I did some standup comedy in college. Yeah… Well. I guess I don’t have to explain to you why I didn’t go much further with that.

2. When I was in nursery school in the San Francisco Bay Area, I became the favorite of the lady who ran the place. Soon a man began showing up there, to take me to the nearby military base to join other children there for classes.

3. My grandfather was the worst driver I have ever known. I don’t remember him ever using the horn; instead, he would roll down the window of his Rambler, and yell, “Cocksucker!” (I think he was actually louder than the horn.) As you might imagine, he became a fantastic hit with all the other drivers. One time, another man in a red convertible – who had just been called that word – smiled over at my grandfather, and said, “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t see you. I’ll try to be more careful. I hope you and your family have a wonderful day.” That’s the only time I remember my grandfather ever being embarrassed – even when his bad driving killed my grandmother several years later.

4. When I was five, I was raped by a sixteen year old boy. Even today, I still have trouble talking about that due to the shame I still feel — and even though I know, cognitively, that I don’t need to feel any shame at all. Odd, isn’t it?

5. When I think back on my childhood years – I guess from about two years old on – my life was filled with extremely strange events. In fact, my very first memory – ever – is of a face notably similar to what is now commonly thought of as an alien. I became familiar with these people in my early years. And I do not believe these are “aliens” at all.

6. I hate liver. It tastes like baked mud. I love strawberries. They taste like heaven.

7. When I was in kindergarten, I refused to hold the hand of a little black girl when all the children were gathered together in a circle at the public school. My refusal seemed to cause everyone to come apart at the seams. A parent-teacher-principal conference was hastily put together, and my mom and I showed up together to face their questions. They wanted to know “what on earth” my mom was teaching “this child.” The teacher actually blushed a little when it turned out that I didn’t want to hold the little girl’s hand simply because her finger had a booger on it. (Eeewww…)

8. I’m gay. And I actually can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel gay — although with the… uh, “assistance” of my former religion, I tried with all my might to convince myself that I wasn’t. (I now believe that people can convince themselves of pretty much anything and, for a while, I convinced myself that I was straight.) Then I laid eyes on my partner. And, um… that was it. Twenty-one years later now, I still think he’s actually the handsomest guy – and, far more importantly, the very best person – I have ever met. (Ever.)

9. Lots and lots of people really do, literally, hate gay people. I used to think that was just hyperbole, or maybe isolated incidents of hate… It isn’t.

10. Gary Larson is my favorite cartoonist. And this is my favorite cartoon:

"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."

1. As a young child around three to age five, I would often have nightly visits by someone I thought was God. He was old with long robes that went to the floor, had a long white beard and was very kind. He never spoke that I remember but I received much peace when he would put his hand on the top of my head. He radiated love and peace.

I would cry into his robes. I remember sitting at his feet.

As an adult, I went to an ashram in Miami and met a 95 year old Kriya Yoga monk. I later realized this monk was the "God" who visited me at night. I saw pictures of him when he was much younger. I recognized him as the "God" who came to me when I was a child.

Over the course of my life, on at least four occasions, I had brushes with death. Each time, I escaped death. Each time, something odd happened that kept me from being hurt. I felt his presense each time. Four of the time, when I felt him, time slowed down to very slow motion and I could feel the strange energy around me in the midst of the crashes or near misses. It was like a wind that had his presense.

I thought it was all a dream until the parts talked about him while I was in therapy. They knew he was God and thought I was odd for not getting this very easy truth.

2. I don't know why I keep being saved.

3. Many of my parts were wiser than me.

4. Most of my parts were boys.

5. Most of my parts were under the age of eight.

6. The angry parts had brown hair. The girls had blonde hair. One fearful boy had blonde hair too.

7. The young parts were really good at the games at Chuck E Cheese.

8. The first time I clearly "saw" a part outside of myself was when the hospital I was at (Colin Ross' place) had a red light / green light game. He won. He then won the duck, duck, goose game. I never "saw" a part outside of myself until those games that day.

9. As soon as I checked myself in to the hospital each time at the Colin Ross Institute, the part that went to work started filling out the paperwork to check herself out because she was not DID and she needed to be at work.

10. My daughter could even tell if a new part came out based on the soft drink I chose.

11. One 14 year old male part named Matthew wanted to be Jewish before he integrated. He integrated after a local Rabbi helped him realize this goal. He wanted to be Jewish because my M.D. back then was Jewish.

12. I almost always had to change out of work clothes into t-shirts and sweats before going to appts because the boy parts would not come out if I was wearing female clothes.

13. The younger parts had a better grasp of all things spiritual.

14. I really did not like the show "united states of Tara." It did not capture DID well at all. I thought that the movie with Tom Hanks captured it well. The movie called Big.

I think, as a rule, if you read everyone else's list you should post your own. Here goes:

1.) As a child when I heard the "moon was made of cheese", I actually pondered if it was made of cheese.

2.) I have no memory of my maternal grandfather and only one of my paternal grandfather. Like Jeff, my grandfather gave me a monkey, when you pressed the bottom, his arms and legs would move. On the way back home, I was playing with it in my uncle's truck, we hit a bump, it fell behind the seat and was gone. Forever. I'd give anything to have it back.

3.) I am very shy and have trouble making friends. This is why I dropped out of college. Twice.

4.) I had a huge crush on one of my teachers in high school. She caught me looking at her legs once. Our arms accidentally brushed once and after that, she always seemed extra nice to me. On the last day of school, before I graduated, she asked me to stay after class to finish my exam. I didn't need the extra time so I left with everyone else. In hindsight, I wonder if that was an 'invitation'. I've always regretted it. Should've stayed behind to see if anything might have happened. (probably nothing)

5.) I didn't have my first girlfriend until I was 21. Being very shy, I guess that shouldn't come as a surprise.

6.) My mother attended residential school and was abused by the clergy there. She has never gone into detail as to what happened to her there, only that it was abuse.

7.) I don't get all the hoopla over Martin Scorese. Yes, I've seen Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Departed. I don't get it. The only film of his I like is Kundun.

8.) My parents raised me on the bible and I still believe in it today. I believe it is the only way I'll get to see my dad again. I don't like anti-christian sentiments, but I blame all the hypocritical christians for that. I also believe Jesus is not the true name of the Son of God but is Yahshua.

9.) I went to therapy for depression and anxiety attacks and fell for my therapist. Honestly, I would give anything to be her boyfriend or just date her. I know and read all about transference and how common this is, but still think she is stunningly beautiful, elegant and graceful. She moved to Ottawa, about a 20 hr drive from where I live, and am seriously tempted to go there to see her.

10.) As to the RI board, I lurked for the longest time before signing up, intimidated by the amount of intelligent posts. I still am.

God bless.

Born we are the same, within the silence, indifference be Thy nameTorn we walk alone, we sleep in silent shadesThe grandeur fades, the meaning never known- 'Born' Nevermore

Et in Arcadia ego wrote:9 - I dabbled enough in occult magick when I was younger to know that control of it is an illusion. I believe most available forumlae are spiked or sabotaged to deliberately harm the practitioner.

I find this to be true.

Born we are the same, within the silence, indifference be Thy nameTorn we walk alone, we sleep in silent shadesThe grandeur fades, the meaning never known- 'Born' Nevermore

01. My second grade teacher was a rather unhinged sasquatch of a woman who once picked up my desk (while I was sitting at it), took it out into the hallway, dumped its contents onto the floor, and then threw it skidding down the hall. I was then instructed to clean it all up and then sit quietly at my desk (in the hall) for the remainder of the period. I did exactly as instructed.

02. The first time I ever played music in front of paying customers was at CBGB. I've lived in NYC for 14 years, but oddly enough, I played that show when I lived in Delaware. It was simultaneously awesome and terrifying.

03. When I was a kid of around 10, my friends and I used to have slingshot battles, because we were, you know ... IDIOTS!

04. My father's father had most of his stomache removed due to ulcers (that's how they used to roll in the 50s). Since he could no longer work, my father quit school in tenth grade in order to earn money for the family. He never went back.

05. My older brother once threw a screwdriver at me while I was running away from him barefoot. So of course, it stuck in the bottom of one of my feet.

06. I was a really good rollerskater when I was a kid, and I spent almost every Saturday and Sunday at the roller rink, grooving to "You Drop A Bomb On Me", and generally macking on the young roller chicks.

07. I have a degree in Secondary Ed/History, and I spent 3 months student teaching in Southern rural England where the kids all referred to me as 'Sir,' and were convinced that everyone in America lived really close to Disneyland, saw Michael Jordan on the street all of the time, and carried a gun.

08. I was ejected from my final high school baseball game for arguing a called third strike. It was the state final. We lost.

09. I used to live in a dumpy Brooklyn apartment where my bedroom was really far away from the bathroom, so I used a chamber pot when I had to pee in the middle of the night.

10. My aunt gave me her copy of Meet the Beatles when I was about 8. It may have been the most life-changing moment of my life.

Edited for spelling.

"Arrogance is experiential and environmental in cause. Human experience can make and unmake arrogance. Ours is about to get unmade."

Bruce Dazzling wrote:01. My second grade teacher was a rather unhinged sasquatch of a woman who once picked up my desk (while I was sitting at it), took it out into the hallway, dumped its contents onto the floor, and then threw it skidding down the hall. I was then instructed to clean it all up and then sit quietly at my desk (in the hall) for the remainder of the period. I did exactly as instructed.

Edited for spelling.

I found this funny because this happened in my class by my third grade teacher. She didn't do it to me but twice to 2 different students. Effin old lady. She had no business being a teacher.

Born we are the same, within the silence, indifference be Thy nameTorn we walk alone, we sleep in silent shadesThe grandeur fades, the meaning never known- 'Born' Nevermore